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Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - Printable Version

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Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - jayasena - 08-31-2012

(08-31-2012, 11:12 PM)garvin link Wrote:The Stanford offense, briefly inspired to delusions of competence, to drive the ball down to the Spartan 3, where Jordan Williamson punch it through for our only score of the final three quarters.

I didn't get to watch the first half but it looks like there was another field goal scored near the end of Q2.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - oman - 08-31-2012

Speaking of costumes, I did like the no stripe look.

I'm not really observant enough to know whether we have done that over the last years.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - Viking_Guy - 08-31-2012

Not sure how much of it was on Stanford's O-Line, and how much was on the fact that the Spartans showed very little respect for the pass.  It's difficult to run power against 9 men in the box.  On a lot of plays, the linebackers were in the backfield as the ball was being handed to Stepfan.

One other thing that hasn't gotten nearly enough mention:  Stanford's two starting fullbacks both didn't play.  It was noticeable, especially on the short yardage plays.  On the last one, the leading fullback blasted to the right and completely whiffed on the middle linebacker who made the initial hit on Taylor.  Seemed like a classic reserve player mindset of "my job is to hit THAT guy" and then not adapting at all to the LB coming over the top of the pile.

VG


Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - Spiny_Norman - 08-31-2012

Quote:I didn't get to watch the first half but it looks like there was another field goal scored near the end of Q2.

Williamson knocked through a 47 or 48 yard FG at the end of the half.  It was straight and true and seemed to be hit it with confidence.  He did not have a perfect night after he hooked a kickoff out of bounds in the 4th quarter to set up SJS on the 35.

A key play seemed to be the injury to the SJS center.  The protection was not as sharp after he went out.

wrt the play calling, a friend in a post-game email referenced the spectre of  . . . .  Buddy Ball.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - JohnR34231 - 09-01-2012

The good news

The defense may have looked shaky at times, but it was tough when it had to be.

Our offensive problems, with a new QB and a new OL, weren't (or at least shouldn't have been) unexpected. We'll get better as the season goes on.

Whether we get better fast enough to have much of a chance against our friends from South Central is, of course, another question.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - socalstanfan1 - 09-01-2012

(09-01-2012, 06:05 AM)JPRI link Wrote:Whether we get better fast enough to have much of a chance against our friends from South Central is, of course, another question.

I think we better worry about Duke before thinking about the trojans.

When reading Shaw's quote a couple of weeks ago stating, (now paraphrasing) that teams can stack the box against us all they want, we are still going to run, all I could think about was, "Didn't Mike Singletary say almost exactly the same thing when he was HC of the 49ers?" 

I think Shaw and the coaches have essentially adopted the Singletary playbook.  And yesterday's game yielded about the same results. 

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - dabigv13 - 09-02-2012

My personal observations...

Overall, we were lucky to beat San Jose State. We got a few phantom pass interference calls, and beyond the first quarter, you could've switched the jerseys on each team and not have noticed a difference.

Nunes did pretty much what was asked of him. Didn't really make many mistakes, but also didn't make any particularly great plays except for the nice TD pass.

The running backs as a whole looked pretty good. Taylor, Wilkerson, and Wright I thought all had some nice touches. When they were able to that is, because....

...the offensive line was atrocious. And the really worrisome thing was that it wasn't just technique stuff that we'd expect to improve over time, it was basic push on short yardage gimme plays. Multiple instances where the San Jose State d-line got penetration and pushed us back on 3rd and 4th and short. Of course there was a lot of technique stuff too, pulling guards not getting out, blitzers not getting picked up and Nunes getting hit. This is the most worrisome thing for me about this game.

WR and TEs looked alright.

In terms of playcalling, I thought we looked a bit vanilla, but overall didn't look too different from a lot of games last year with the striking difference being the way our play action passing did not work at all, and we didn't see our TE's rampaging in the seams.

On defense, our front 7 didn't look too bad, SJS really didn't do much on the ground, and I actually thought they got pretty decent pressure. A lot of times the SJS QB made some really tough throws with guys in his face. And in the secondary, we played poorly, but the SJS receivers also made some very good plays. I was hoping Lyons would look like a lockdown corner, but that does not seem to be the case. Our secondary is what we thought they'd be.

We'll need to improve in order to beat every single team we play the rest of the season. And we'll have to do so by leaps and bounds otherwise USC will be a blowout.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - JohnR34231 - 09-02-2012

Didn't mean to imply that we should be overlooking Duke.

Hey, after this last week we shouldn't overlook Palo Alto High.

Keller Chryst would probably torch us, anyway.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - yvonne - 09-02-2012

There's an argument to be made to Keller Chryst:

Stanford can't win without a stellar quarterback. You are that quarterback.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - washingtonismoney - 09-02-2012

To be honest, I went in expecting much worse than I got when I watched the replay. I don't think we were lucky to win that game at all--I think we were the better team. SJSU can point to some bad calls, without question, but on the other hand their DBs really were generally mauling wideouts; maybe the exact calls weren't right, but the distribution seemed about right to me. Stanford could've had a couple picks that just missed, and could've had a couple of TD passes that just missed. I thought the game was pretty neutral, luck-wise.

Overall, I think the game was concerning in the short-term but medium- and long-term doesn't affect my outlook too much. The main problem was the offensive line's run-blocking; as we've discussed elsewhere, we've had slow starts from an OL perspective in 2009 and 2011. With the amount of talent we've recruited at the position, there's really no reason to expect anything other than--at least--a very good offensive line. Whether it gets to the level to enable the rest of the team to work is another question. I felt the pass protection was pretty good in general, so I think it will be by the end of the season. It'll look unsightly at times, but I think we all expected that. Nevertheless, missing out on three 3rd/4ths and ones is really unacceptable.

Nunes was basically fine; the question is, is that an omen for expanding what he does or did he only play fine because his role was limited? It looks like Nunes has the arm to make all the passes, though not spectacularly, and his decisionmaking was generally sound. I would like to see him be more accurate in placing the ball--a few of his completions should've had better YAC if the ball were placed better--and have fewer balls batted down by the defensive line. He looked crisp and competent running the two minute drill, and didn't panic when things looked dicey at the end of the game. That's a trap a lot of favorites get into when the underdog starts to challenge them--panicking, trying to do too much, etc. Nunes didn't fall into that. He'll be a competent quarterback for a year or maybe two, depending on the development of Nottingham, Hogan, Lloyd, maybe Burns.

The question is how much they give him to execute. Obviously I agree with most people that more downfield plays should've been called, but I'll add in another criticism: the coaches should also explore stretching the field horizontally. This was the approach used in the first two drives and it worked pretty well.

In fact, the weirdness of the game starts with the first two drives. Basically the team executed tolerably in the first two drives and had a decent chunk of the playbook available and scored each time. I'm not sure why the coaches backed away from that approach, but it's what allowed them to even it up. The coaches, it seems to me, got overconfident. Shaw is accurate but not wholly truthful when he says execution was the problem on offense. If the run blocking were better, the team would've won quite handily; nevertheless, the coaches could've done better with playcalling. (Also, a subject re: run blocking: Lee Ward didn't have a good game, I think, and missed a couple of critical blocks; also seemed to be a bit slow for the Spider 3 Y Banana. Hewitt will be a nice upgrade there.)

Defensively, again, it was a weird instance of the team changing its approach after a couple of drives. In this case, in the first quarter or so, the corners played tight; thereafter, they played off, loosely. I'm not sure why the defensive guys went away from a successful approach, but one hopes the mistake isn't repeated. THe defense had three adequate/good quarters and one poor one. While below our expectations--and Shaw's, judging by the postgame press conference--I wouldn't at all call it the weaklink. That was the offense.

The special teams were solid. After Brian Polian's reign of error, it really is a comfort to have a special teams submit a performance in which nothing goes wrong. If Alamar can deliver this level of performance throughout the season, the special teams will be significantly improved from last year.

If Shaw and staff are average, collectively, the team will be much better by the end of the season than the beginning. The question is, for me: a) how quickly does the improvement come, and how high is the level of improvement and b) while the team is still learning, how many wins can the team engineer in less-than-aesthetic ways? That's what I'll be watching.

EDIT: one more note. It seems like the emphasis the coaches put on getting more turnovers, particularly INTs, was in effect on Friday. It looked like the defense tried to jump a few too many routes yesterday. Ed Reynolds, for example, was 1 for 2 in such route-jumping.

EDIT2: not also that cute/creative playcalling did not totally expire after the first quarter. Stanford had a very cute use of an unbalanced line to get Stepfan Taylor to the 1 yard line in first-and-goal. Sadly we weren't able to punch it in.

Re: Final: Stanford 20, San Jose State 17 - doubledub - 09-02-2012

Does anyone know why Vaughters did not play in the second half?  I saw him get totally taken out of the play when the SJSU QB ran it in for the score, but other than that, I am not sure.  I don't know that Jarek Lancaster was better than him.  Maybe this means Tarpley starts along side Skov next week?

I also saw Wayne Lyons play CB for a few plays in the second half, but then he disappeared.  I thought Terrance Brown just was not getting it done.

For the defense in general, we weren't rushing more than 3 or 4 at the passer for most of the first half, and blitzed sparingly.  I think the idea was to keep it as simple as possible so that we can save up the good stuff for the next weeks.  The "improvement" we saw in the second half was largely due to defensive play calling that gave the players chances to make plays.

Someone above wrote that Montgomery dropped the long pass in the second half. Not true.  The DB made a great play on the ball and pulled on his arm, preventing him from securing the ball.  Not much he could do...the DB was just stronger.

On the WRs, it also seemed that Montgomery was not on the field for a lot of offensive snaps, almost like he and Terrell were alternating.  And with all the big talk about JRP making great strides, he was nearly invisible in the game.

On Shaw...from what I read on the various message boards and hear from my friends, no one like his coaching style or his ego.  He drinks too much of his own kool aid.  I agree with the person who says that he panicked placing Yankey at LT.Â